October 27, 2024

outside of time

Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino.

You may have noticed that there was no Sunday post last week. I took a spontaneous holiday in commemoration of my partner’s birthday. We went to the Dodgers game and watched them clinch their spot in the World Series. I marveled at the long walk back to the car in a lot I’d never seen before, never knew existed. The ballpark is such a different place than the one I knew as a kid. It’s not the ballpark my father used to take me to. 🕯️ RIP Fernando Valenzuela 🕯️

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My mother, on the phone, said, Guess who died? In this instance I actually wanted to guess, so I asked, Is it someone we know personally? No, she said.

The guy who sang the theme song of The Love Boat died at 86. I can’t believe my mom outlived the guy who sang The Love Boat song! I said to my partner. There’s that @LizaMinelliOutlives account on Twitter that I always think about when someone younger than my mother dies.

I gave up.

Your father’s third wife, my mother said. She found out from my half-brother. Why my mother said no when I asked if it was someone we knew personally is a mystery. I knew her personally. The last time I saw my father’s third wife was the last time I saw my father alive, at a Shakey’s in Sylmar on a rainy February day in 2014.

*

In the car in the morning on the way to school the 13-year-old is the DJ. All I ask is that we don’t listen to Lana Del Rey or The Deftones. It’s too much for me to hear in the morning. So lately it’s been a lot of Björk. I love Björk, and my kid plays a lot of her songs I don’t have strong familiarity with. The albums closest to my heart are Debut and Post.

I asked if I could play one of my favorite Björk songs on the drive. I wasn’t prepared to start crying hearing it. My kid didn’t notice, and I’m glad—it’s too much to explain. The songs I listened to on cassette tape while on bus rides throughout Mexico, alone, a 23-year-old, decades away from 51-year-old me listening to the same song while driving the kid to middle school—why not cry?

*

I feel outside of time completely. When I heard that the election was two weeks away I felt startled—my existence is a tunnel vision of home, the one day a week drive to California Institute of the Arts to teach, an occasional outing. Last weekend was unusual—a birthday dinner in Silverlake, Taste of Soul the next day, a significant Dodgers game the day after. But usually I’m at home, thinking and not thinking about cancer, and trying to plan but remembering I can’t really plan. I’m supposed to be coming up with event ideas for my book reprints next spring. My social media break includes Reddit so I’m not scrolling through people’s experiences with ovarian cancer and chemo this month. I may be outside of time but I’m burrowed inside my life, which has narrowed somewhat to accommodate my partner’s healing. That’s all I want, anyway. Healing.

*

I cried silently again yesterday in the car, this time on the way home from picking up the 13-year-old after school. She had been playing Suzanne Vega, and I said, If you like that, you might like this—can I play it? The sound of “Johnny Sunshine” by Liz Phair filled the car. I couldn’t sing aloud because I’d sob. The lyrics are still there, in my brain. I don’t know why I loved that song so much—I have no relation to I think I’ve been taken/for everything I own. No one has hurt me like that, certainly not when the song was most important to me, when I was 23, 24, 25. Maybe I most related to I’m alone, baby, I’m alone. At least I had the restraint to not play the song “Flower,” another one with its lyrics etched in my brain, a song I surely put on a mix tape once, a song I don’t need my kid to know just yet. But I listened to it alone on the way home from the pool today.

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I am envisioning a small private event to celebrate my books next year. Invitation-only, hors d'oeuvres, interesting drink options related to the books. Days later, a more public book launch.

It’s interesting to be selling these three books again, all at once. How much do I want to do? Plans, in the second half of 2024, have been righteously fucked with, feel temporary and unsettled. I ask for permission to be loosey-goosey, to be unconfirmed, to allow for the Universe to further disrupt. Yes, the election is nearly here, I know, I voted weeks ago. But let me stay outside of time a bit longer. I have a bed to make, a kid to pick up, a partner recovering from chemo to check on. If you need me I’ll be somewhere in my tight orbit. Possibly crying. Possibly singing.